Wednesday, February 3, 2016

After attacking scientists who push for open data, Judith Curry now wants to muzzle climate scientists. She promoted another article from a science-denying WUWT-er, who wants to restart climate science research (archived here).

He doesn't say why, but I expect that he's tired of hearing about the "hottest year on record" and the rest, and thinks that if he doesn't know what's happening it can't hurt him.
In a meandering article with much long-winded detail about how he sometimes does a clean install of his computer, Kip Hansen proposes a four day conference, attended by "the right people". A " dozen or two bright, open minds" who would "get together" to decide how to investigate Earth's climate starting from scratch. Kip proposes they would:

...get together and develop an outline which could then be compared to what is currently being done. This might lead to some insight in how to break the current Climate Science deadlock. It might lead to some new ways of thinking about the subject. It might open up new research directions. It might just help direct the next generation of climate scientists in new directions.

Kip admits he has no idea of where to start or what questions to ask. What seems clear also is that he has no idea of what research is being and has ever been done that forms the foundation of our current understanding of climate, weather and the Earth system.

Neither does his patron, Judith Curry. She lumps climate science and policy together and says they are in a "really big rut". She also built a straw man and falsely claimed:

Specifically with regards to climate scientists, there is a large number of scientists, including those in influential positions, that regard 100% of the warming to be anthropogenic, and the only scientific challenges are to refine our estimates of radiative forcing and refine climate model parameterizations. Think Gavin Schmidt, among many others.

What might trigger pushing the reset button? Well in the U.S., election of any of the Republican presidential candidates might do it. Funding priorities for scientific research and energy policy would change. Many scientists would be relieved, I’m sure others would be horrified. If the U.S. climate change funding were to be redirected to be predominantly for natural climate variability, would the rats desert the sinking funding ship and start focusing on natural variability?

Judith doesn't read science any more, or she'd know that there is a lot of climate research on natural variability. (Perhaps her sole purpose in life these days is to create and promote myths for deniers.) Here are some journals she could open, if she wanted to:

I find it interesting, too, that she advocates that climate research priorities should be politicised and set by the President of the USA. I doubt that past US Presidents have interfered in the way Judith proposes.

What research findings, following the current trajectory, might trigger a rethink? Apart from continuation of a slow rate of warming, I am thinking that failing to close the carbon cycle in a simplistic way might prove to be very illuminating, as well as the satellite observations of atmospheric CO2.

In that, Judith shows she knows nothing about climate. The rate of warming is not slow, it is faster than ever in civilisation and heading for ten times faster than in the past 65 million years. What she means by closing the carbon cycle in a simplistic way I have not the faintest clue. Perhaps she thinks it makes her sound "sciency" to her dim denier fans. Notice how she threw them a bone with her "satellite observations" reference. Deniers love satellites, but I can't see how OCO-2 is going to help their anti-science campaigns.

Then Judith wants to see how hot it can get in ten years by increasing carbon emissions, writing:

From the policy perspective, failure to implement meaningful reductions in carbon emission and to change/improve the climate in a material way could promote a rethinking of this whole thing, but it will be a decade at least before any meaningful evaluation can be made.

Finally she launches into advocacy, touting her own lack of ethics, implying that being concerned for humanity is unethical, writing:

I think the only practical thing that can be done in the very near term is paying much more attention to research ethics, the traditional norms of science, and the problems generated by scientists that become activists, particularly the journal editors and professional societies.

In Judith's world, the only scientists and ex-scientists who are allowed to be activists are herself, of course, and maybe others who can't wait for the world to burn, such as Richard Lindzen and Willie Soon.

You'll have noticed that Judith was incapable of answering any of Kip's questions. She couldn't even come up with an agenda for his four day bright spark gabfest. So I'll make a suggestion. Here's a program for Kip and Judith and Judith's Republican "allies against science".

The "Dozen Bright Minds" Climate Research Workshop

Day One:Where we are

Agreeing workshop objectives and criteria by which to judge it's success

Mapping we are now - what we know, what we partly know, knowledge gaps

Day two: Where we want to be

Priorities for future research, filling knowledge gaps - looking ahead five years, ten years and twenty years and beyond

Priorities for ongoing research - what research is essential to maintain, what areas would suffer significant set-back if research were slowed or stopped (babies and bathwater)

Priorities for monitoring changes in climate - what existing metrics must be maintained and what data is needed that we aren't collecting at present

Rationale for the above

Day three: How we plan to get there

What is required to deliver the research priorities:

Resources - personnel, agencies, equipment, funding

Alliances with other disciplines, agencies, research teams and organisations around the world

A lot of funding bodies would already be doing all the above, so I don't know that the wheel needs to be reinvented. At the international level, there is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. However if Judith's Republican deniers do decide to disrupt climate science research, they might consider a workshop along the lines of the above, or something similar, before they burn all the books.

One concern I have is whether or not a "dozen bright minds" will be sufficient. I've no doubt that there are a dozen bright minds who could do the job, the problem I foresee is how to ensure ownership from and commitment to the resulting plan by all the other dozens of bright minds in the world. For example:

Which "dozen" disciplines and sub-disciplines would be represented at the expense of all the other research?

What about scientists and scientific research organisations in fields related to climate?

Should people who have a stake in climate research be invited to participate?

If stakeholders are not to be invited, how will the Dozen Bright Minds be informed about their concerns and priorities?

Even if stakeholders are to be invited, which ones, and what about all the other stakeholders who aren't. How will their interests be discovered and factored in?

There's more. It's one thing to plan and organise research within an institution, but is it wise or even possible to put strict boundaries around what research can and can't be done by anyone anywhere? What happens when something new is discovered that has important implications for humanity or the world at large? Is it not allowed to be pursued because it doesn't fit Judith Curry's notion of what is important? Should the President of the USA dictate what climate research is allowed and what is not?

As for Kip Hansen's initial suggestion that the world stops monitoring changes and stops collecting data on weather, sea level and ocean heat content - that would set the world on a certain road to disaster.

And there you have it. With more analysis, wit and detail than anybody could reasonably expect form a rapid response science blog. Many sites have highly trained astrophysicist, great great stats guys, smart social scientists and a whole bunch of giants of climate science but to my knowledge none have or could produce stuff like this in a couple of hours.

Yes OK this piece on Dr Curry was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel but Sou has not seen it that way. Her writing standards are exceptional and her speed nudges the impossible.

Using the same ridiculous logic Kip Hansen should cover the instrument panel in his car. All these trivial indicators don't really vary much even when spinning his wheels in the mud. As his speed indicator only varies a tiny bit compared to the speed of light. It can be ignored just as temperature of the Earth does not vary compared to zero degrees Kelvin.

Better still he should paint his windscreen as then all collision targets will simply disappear!

I am sure he would gladly board a jet air liner where the pilots have no pesky instruments to distract them. The Wright brothers got along fine without them.

My autistic mate would call him a moron! I have no opinion of how brain damaged Kip Hansen is. It is difficult to measure delusion and projection without instruments. Bert

This is akin to satellite temperature analyses, which do *not* measure temperature directly, but use very complex calculations to derive CO2 concentrations.For the US satellites:Google: NOAA satellites CO2

Mosher is loyal to Curry but he's clearly treading on shells on Climate etc. His science is forcing him in one direction (in lock step with Phil Jones) whilst Curry is disappearing in the rear vision mirror. How does he handle this on Climate Etc? Gutlessly of course.

So Kip the Missionary wants a restart? I suggest we start with Richard Lindzen circa mid 1960's and his failed attempt at generating a model for QBO. Skip forward to today, and we have a plausible theory that matches the data nicely:http://web.archive.org/web/20160203214100/http://contextearth.com/2016/02/03/if-the-glove-dont-fit/

Too bad that Lindzen stalled progress in atmospheric climate science for over 40 years with his ineptitude. I bet he will want a redo, too :)

"From the policy perspective, failure to implement meaningful reductions in carbon emission and to change/improve the climate in a material way could promote a rethinking of this whole thing, but it will be a decade at least before any meaningful evaluation can be made. " --- It's the frog in the pot on the stove, not noticing the rising temperature, that I think of.

When I think of the changes I've noticed (in person and in world news) in the past two three decades, I'm terrified of what the next decade will bring, let along the period beyond that. It's like they have no conception of all we have already lost. Or that we are locking-in a huge system with massive momentum and forcing a very rough future for Earth and her inhabitants, whether at 55 mph, or 65 mph really don't make a bit of difference.

But why would Curry care about the long term future, she's an old fart like me, guaranteed to miss the real fun. She's queen of her ant hill and loves it - immediate gratification, nothing quite like it.

That intelligent people can look at all transitioning "natural" trends on this planet and the transitions we've already witnessed at this earliest stage of our Grande Geophysical Experiment - and think nothing is changing or threatening and that we still have foreeva to figure things out, is nothing less than stupefying.

That intelligent people can turn so hubristic and down right sociopathic is heartbreaking.

"From the policy perspective, failure to implement meaningful reductions in carbon emission and to change/improve the climate in a material way could promote a rethinking of this whole thing, but it will be a decade at least before any meaningful evaluation can be made."

We cannot get sensible gun control through Congress, so let's reexamine mechanics and see if bullets can really kill people.

If you want to be a bit pedantic and not allow Sou any artistic licence as well as being a bit nitpicking - then you may be technically correct.

The words Sou highlights obviously are intended to mean Kip thinks these activities are a waste of time and should be discontinued. I think the existence of his 12 bright things directing what should be studied amounts to him wanting a ban.

By the way, if someone wants to re-examine what metrics are most important for climate and climate change, more power to them.

I doubt they'll find anything new, but I think it's a very useful exercise for the vast majority of interested non-scientists, who probably haven't examined these metrics and their importance even once.

It's kinda like most homework in college courses: you're not doing new work, just re-doing old work to help you understand it.

Sorry, Windchasers, but methinks you are tone trolling here. The likes of Dr. Curry and Kip Hansen have already made it apparent through their actions/viewpoints on many issues concerning AGW over the years that they are partisan political animals.

They try to dress up their 'skepticism' as science, but when you've been following these people as long as most of the readers here have, you can see right through all their bullshit. They are not honest brokers. Not even remotely.

Is the seemingly unending battle over tiny changes in metrics such as LOTI (Land-Ocean Temperature Index), ocean heat content, Annual Global Mean Temperature Anomaly Over Land & Sea (and its plethora of alphabet/version variations), fledgling measurements of global sea level rise, [and the list goes on] . . . is this the purpose of Climate Science? Can we justify the effort and resources being spent on this activity? Does any of it produce new understanding of the Earth’s climate or lead us to answers about potential solutions to changing climate?

Do you agree with Kip that monitoring climate change is a waste of effort and resources? Do you think it should be discontinued as he is suggesting? Do you think that he's not suggesting it can't be justified?

Metzomagic, I've been following the issue a long time. I'm not a fan of most of what's posted on Curry's blog.

But that's no excuse for making up stuff. Sorry.

If you want to call a strict adherence to distortion-free analysis "tone trolling".. well, I think you're misusing the term.

Call it what you will, but it's dishonest, and it's something that we shouldn't be doing. If you can't rebuke someone without distorting what they say, then you've got a problem. The fact that Curry is wrong on so many other blogs isn't an excuse for making up stuff here.

Reading the entire blog post, I think he's suggesting that we should give everything a look, and consider what's justified and what's not. That is the overall tone of the post and the comments. Not "this is wrong", but "let's examine our premises and see which ones are justified".

For instance, Kip said: "If we started to investigate the Earth’s climate from first principles, where would we start? What questions would we seek to answer?"-- and -- It should be obvious to all that I am out of my depth here – in over my head – let me be the first to point this out. I don’t know what questions should even be asked.

In other words, he seems to be genuinely asking questions. Which is a great place to start, so long as you actually follow through and look for the answers.

I suspect that upon giving it such a look, he'd agree that measuring surface temperatures is necessary.

The problem here is not that Kip is asking questions about climate science. It's that many of these questions have already been well-answered, and Kip seems to be unaware of that.

Metzomagic is almost right. Windchasers is doing more than tone trolling, she (or he) has called me a liar more than once, and justifies it by arguing that Kip Hansen didn't mean the words that he wrote.

If Kip didn't mean what he wrote then he should have written something different, and probably would have.

Windchasers apologises on behalf of Kip Hansen and argues he didn't really mean what he wrote when he suggested that monitoring climate change can't be justified, saying: "In other words, he seems to be genuinely asking questions. Which is a great place to start, so long as you actually follow through and look for the answers. "

The entire article by Kip Hansen is an example of concern trolling. Concern trolls present themselves as reasonable and very nice, agreeable people who basically agree but just have one little concern.

Kip is a science denier from way back who favours WUWT. He is usually very nice about it, but just "concerned". Maybe climate science is on the right track, but then again maybe it's all a hoax, and before we jump to the conclusion that it's real, maybe we should start over from scratch and in another 165 years we might have an answer.

Kip might be "nice" and agreeable and a very lovely chap all around. He's a climate science denier through and through. It's not nice to delay action to mitigate climate change. It's wrong and nasty, even when it comes from seemingly nice people.

You've already given your version of "an accurate representation" of what someone is saying when they ask if monitoring temperature, ocean heat and sea level "can be justified". I don't agree with your interpretation, but I won't call you a liar.

(It's one thing for you to interpret what he actually wrote differently to him suggesting we stop it, it's quite another thing for you to accuse me of lying when I interpret it as him wanting to stop it.)

The thing about questioning the value of monitoring climate change is that this monitoring is crucial. If there were a higher category than "essential" than monitoring change would fit. If we don't keep an eye on what is happening, how quickly, and where - what hope have we of responding to the signals?

What happens when sea level accelerates further but we don't notice how much it's risen till the next cyclone and storm surge?

What happens when land surface temperatures have crept up, but we only notice it when the number of "catastrophic" fire danger days is 20 a year instead of three a year?

For someone to even hint at a suggestion that this monitoring is a waste of resources is foolish. To say it outright as Kip Hansen did is beyond foolish. To be an apologist for someone who suggests this is ...

So, Windchaser, if it was not anything close, how did this discussion happen? Spontaneous creation from the primeval ooze?

As far as I can tell, JD, if you say "I'm not sure if we should do X", some people will interpret that as "we shouldn't do X". They take your uncertainty as a statement about the certainty of science or scientists or general public knowledge.

Reading Kip's words, he says over and over again that he doesn't know. That he's not qualified. That there are better people to handle these questions.

To me, that means "I don't know". I can't see how that can be interpreted as "climate scientists are wrong on this". Rather, he comes across as genuinely unsure of what is the correct way to approach this. As many climate skeptics and deniers are! (Unsurprisingly.)

In contrast, Curry is all-too-willing to say that scientists don't know nuffin', even about questions that have been very carefully studied for quite some time.

Just as Kip would be wrong to conflate his own ignorance with what climate scientists don't know, it's also wrong to conflate his questions with an accusation that climate scientists are measuring the wrong things. He says he doesn't know, and I think we should take him at his word.

And this should go without saying, but Kip's ignorance has very little bearing on what policies we should be enacting.

I welcome and encourage this questioning attitude; it's the first step towards understanding the science. So long as he also takes the next step, and cracks open a book on the subject and educate himself.

The thing is, we'll get to see exactly how the Kip Hansen/Judith Curry repriming of science will work, because the venture capitalist who's now running the CSIRO is basically doing exactly what they want.

Reading Kip's words, he says over and over again that he doesn't know. That he's not qualified. That there are better people to handle these questions.

Another one straight out of the denier handbook: Kip is "just asking questions". That just *might* be acceptable behaviour if he didn't have a whole boatload of prior history on this. He's the resident troll-in-chief over at places like Andy Revkin's.

Give it a rest Windchasers. As metzomagic says, Kip is a long term denier. He's been commenting on denier blogs so long that he can be classed as a disinformer, not merely a denier, since there is no excuse for him to not have learnt something about climate. He's been at WUWT since well before HW got off the ground.

I'll regard your refusal to apologise to me in the manner in which you unmistakably intend it, and in the same light as your defense of Kip Hansen's nonsense.

Lolwut, jgnfld? I normally get called an alarmist. My position is nearly identical with that of the IPCC.

I'm going to reject the tribalist notion that if I have any disagreements with you whatsoever, then I must be part of "the other side". Scientists disagree with each other all the time, and yet they manage to still agree on most stuff.

Sou, the only thing that I intend to convey is that I still think you're wrong on this; that what you claimed Kip said was not supportable by what he actually said in the links you provided here as supporting evidence.

Not impressed (with Windchasers comments). One way I judge people is their willingness to see another point of view. I don't care much about politeness on a blog normally, but there are lines that I draw.

I couldn't care less whether or not Windchasers accepts climate science. My beef was with her (or him) arriving as my guest at HotWhopper to call me a liar multiple times, and refusing to apologise.

Windchaser is much to generous towards Kip Curry. ("Kip" is chicken in Dutch.)

However, not funding is not the same as banning.

Curry and the Republican politicians she puts her hope in could not stop the funding of the measurement of the global mean surface temperature. They are made for meteorology, not climatology. They are made by 200 sovereign countries, not just by the USA.

Windy, Kip is pushing a framing of climate science that is completely at odds with reality, but entirely in tune with pseudo-skeptical wishful thinking.

It's a massive exercise in projection, and distortion..an outsider pretending to be an insider. A fictional account of a field.

Then Curry adds her disingenuous handwringing at the end...it's a double act of concern trolling by two simply academically irrelevant people, who have been given prominence for their willingness to fabricate imaginary realities in the service of professional denialism.

Curry has been quoted in 'The Australian' newspaper on the CSIRO cuts, making completely ignorant comments about CSIRO Ocean and Atmosphere's research. The technique is the same as K.Hansen's: handwringing [science has lost its way, let's start again?], brazen misdirection [they shouldna being playing IPCC games], making stuff up [they should have been concentrating on southern hemisphere science].O&A *were* concentrating on SH science, as their publication record clearly indicates. Curry just lied about it.

"Is the seemingly unending battle over tiny changes in metrics such as LOTI (Land-Ocean Temperature Index), ocean heat content, Annual Global Mean Temperature Anomaly Over Land & Sea (and its plethora of alphabet/version variations), fledgling measurements of global sea level rise, [and the list goes on] . . . is this the purpose of Climate Science? Can we justify the effort and resources being spent on this activity? Does any of it produce new understanding of the Earth’s climate or lead us to answers about potential solutions to changing climate?"

It is a serious scientific question. I certainly am not the first to pose it.

There is no suggestion that such records should not be kept or such metrics should not be followed -- it is the endless battle....the re-configuration, re-analysis, bickering, etc about very tiny changes in these metrics that may be a waste of research efforts. Just a simple count of how many different versions of surface temperature there are shows at least a lot of duplication of effort -- and the results are so close to one another that it seems to be wasted effort and wasted research dollars.

Miriam does not like be contradicted -- and does not like folks pointing out that she accuses her victims of saying things they didn't (no matter how true that is...).

Thanks for your support of accuracy in reporting and fair play.

My essay asks a lot of questions, provides no answers and calls for a disinterested top-flight professional review of the scientific field we call Climate Science. How that can be a threat to anyone, I really don't know.

Thank you. I've been trying to point past Kip and his ilk for years. In his Dotearth guest post cited here, he failed to note Andy Revkin wasn't promoting his views, indicated in both his "Editor's Picks":

"I honestly think Andy wanted to give Kip all the rope he needed...The outcome was predictable, and not pretty."

"If I were Andy I'd get tired of always being criticized by everyone who never swings a bat, so I'd gave kip a bat and send him up to the plate too."

Back in the day, climate science denial was popular at DotEarth, and the truth barely got a word in. Andy is a popular and famous guy who gets invited everywhere (Pope Francis had him at his conference last year while producing Laudato Si, and he got an AGU award for communication recently). He's a difficult case: a personable chap, with a "can't we all get along together" attitude and a tendency to endorse fracking and ignore truly clean energy. He appears to have stopped buddying with Pielke Jr. but in scientific circles has earned some opprobrium for his willful blindness to the seriousness of our situation.

Unfortunately, giving people like Kip a platform only gives them a line on their list of accomplishments, and lends power to their elbow. Like one of those toys that always bounces back up.

windchasers, setting aside your personal attacks, people like Kip are the most difficult to overcome because they are plausible. I'm sorry you went south here, but after many years of regular attacks from Kip, who sounds quite plausible but never weighs in on the side of truth, you should be able to identify his victim, which is climate science. He and his colleagues' stock in trade is politeness, but I prefer rude truth to polite dishonesty.

"eGads! "The main objective of the meeting is to increase the efficiency and impact of communications of I.P.C.C. findings across the world."

Now that they have "settled" on political findings (the science portions being far different from the political summaries), they need help not in normal communication -- if their efforts were to simply communicate obviously true findings, it would be easy -- and they would have had success. As it is, only the choir is listening to them. Now they want new propaganda efforts.

A new propaganda effort will backfire -- the harder they push, it will only become more apparent that they have overblown uncertain results, push continually unfulfilled predictions, and have generally mucked up the whole field.

The tide is beginning to turn. More propaganda will produce more push back -- not only from the public, but from politicians, and senior climate scientists as they achieve positions (tenure, retirement, etc) that allow them to resist the usual pressures that prevent so many from speaking out.

It won't be fast, but it will come....

If you are honestly an "alarmist" you will see that this is not honest.

clarification, years of personal attacks on me and my colleagues at DotEarth from Kip, wmar, Kurt, and the a posse who have taken possession of DotEarth, which is the New York Times' only climate blog, sadly.

It fits management policy, which is not exactly to lie, but to allow false balance on a regular basis. For example, in the recent Congressional temperature record witchhunt, there was a good but overly neutral article on Rep. Lamar Smith's crusade to shut down NOAA's temperature record reporting (two weeks late), an OpEd from Smith himself, a dishonest piece by Paul Thackerhttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opinion/sunday/scientists-give-up-your-emails.htmland a clear one from Mike Mann (I make that 1 3/4 for truth, 1/4 neutral, and 2 for attack dogs). There was no report at all on Sen. Ted Cruz's nonsense that followed.

For a good review of the temperature record nonsense accessible to a sufficiently informed layperson, Dr. Swanson's letter to Rep. Smith quoted here: "UAH TLT Series Not Trustworthy:http://rabett.blogspot.com/2015/12/uah-tlt-series-not-trustworthy.html

Reply to Susan ==> Thank you for re-posting my DotEarth comment here -- I like the exposure.

You are being disingenuous when you say "years of personal attacks on me and my colleagues at DotEarth from Kip," -- You know that is simply not true. I do not post personal attacks, on you or anyone else. (I have no idea who you think are your "colleagues" at Dot Earth.) I often post comments that contradict or that are quite the opposite of your point of view -- which is not the same thing at all. That is the purpose of comment sections -- too have a chance to state one's own point of view or opinions.

My thanks to Miriam O’Brien for mentioning my recent essay at Judith Curry's "Climate Etc." blog -- I consider it a badge of honor that she considers my meager contributions to the efforts to set things in Climate Science right important enough to warrant a full-blown personal attack here. It would have been better if she has actually read the essay, of course, but no one is perfect.

For instance, you wrote: You cannot average away original measurement error.... Oh really? Funny, I do it every day. Hundreds (thousands?) of other calibration labs do it every day. The instruments we calibrate are then used to machine, fabricate, and test millions of parts and products.

Averaging away original measurement error is one of the most basic techniques in metrology - you know, the science of measurement.

Oh, and the whole idea that these measurements are imaginary is just denial wrapped in pseudoscience. It's quite obvious you know very little about metrology. LIGO's laser interferometers are able to detect slight changes in length to 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's 1 part in a billion trillion. Please go tell them to stop measuring imaginary gravity waves emitted billions of years ago.

Just because you are Sergeant Schultz ("I know nothing!"), doesn't mean that everyone else is as ignorant as you.

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All you need to know about WUWT

WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary, Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase:

Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure.

Definition of Denier (Oxford): A person who denies something, especially someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence.
‘a prominent denier of global warming’
‘a climate change denier’

Alternative definition: A former French coin, equal to one twelfth of a Sou, which was withdrawn in the 19th century. Oxford. (The denier has since resurfaced with reduced value.)